


The Good Kind of Fuck Up

by 2trangerMcDanger



Series: pitch solkat [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Awkward Romance, Awkwardness, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, First Times, Fluff, M/M, big fluff, sfw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-09 15:24:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20997041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2trangerMcDanger/pseuds/2trangerMcDanger
Summary: "Right, right, none of their business, it’s our business. Our business being…” you stop yourself from saying the word again, and he doesn’t say it either for a really long time. The two of you stutter the word out in jagged and uneven unison. “Kismesis.”It feels like eating medicine or soap. Are you sure you want to be with someone who’s this awkward and makes you feel so awkward? There’s no going back now, how much of a fucking dick move would it be if you said 'Haha yeah, I know we just agreed to be in a relationship together, but I'm suddenly having second doubts and don't wanna bother anymore! See ya!"xxxDraft 3





	The Good Kind of Fuck Up

**Author's Note:**

> No, i did not write in Sollux's lisp, and no I did not use the R-word  
Just in case these things matter to you (they do to me *eyeball emojis*)

You two fight. A lot. It’s not a secret, at all really. Not only does everyone know about it, people place bets on what it’s about and how many times will Karkat to swear off you as a friend “forever” and how many hours will he spend alone, pouting, sometimes crying before coming back and apologizing and say he didn’t mean it and you’ll do the same (except without crying, you never cry)

No one ever questioned whether or not you two fight, the question is the implication. Are you fighting platonically or…?

You never finish that question in your head, you don’t like thinking about it too much. Everyone’s expecting you to be secretly pining for each other, and you’ll admit, there’s this burning feeling inside you every time you look at him or think about him too much. Like the way his eye twitches when he’s tired, or how you catch a glimpse of his ugly crooked teeth. How his eyebrows could not _possibly_ be any thicker or the way those disgusting caterpillars on his face worm their way all over the place when he’s talking, seriously why the hell does he have to emote so much? Pick a face and keep it. And you hate how everyone is his friend, or at least tolerates a conversation with him and can be civil if only for a minute. How many people are just _happy_ to see him and how he’s always got someone looking forward to talking with him. How it makes you think '_see, Sollux?? You could be like that, you could be friends with everyone and have people happy to see you and happy to talk to you if you just applied yourself like him._ And then you tell your thoughts _Yeah I’d love to apply myself like that if everyone wasn’t the worst person imaginable and NOT in the good and charming way like you are. Oh, so suddenly you’re charming?_ ' Ugh, not dealing with that today. This is why everyone hates you and you hate everyone.

But you hate Karkat in a…different way. He’s not always so irredeemable like some other people you know and are stuck with on a cold, cold hunk of rock and metal. He makes you laugh, albeit against his will and unintentionally (respectively) sometimes. You could never tell him though, absolutely not. There’s someone out of those ten slimy traitors who's whispering about it, whispering behind your back and saying shit you don’t wanna hear and can’t admit at the moment.

The point is, fighting is common, bickering, one-upping, spiting, and even (this is your favorite) loudly talking shit behind each other’s back for the full intention of having him hear it, is all common. In public. In private, your fighting is different. Not incredibly different, but it’s different enough.

You find yourself seeking out his company more than him seeking out yours. Maybe it’s because he’s always "so busy” doing something, but all you ever see him doing is playing ass-pattycake with everyone around you and wasting time. Not like there’s anything else to do around. There are only so many interesting things about a shitty desktop that has more in common with a hunk of wood than an actual computer that you can tear apart and take notes on. And no one else cares about your notes except for him. And no one else cares that you can do something better than them. So on the off chance you find him alone, you tend to take the opportunity.

“What do you want.” He says, flatly, sitting on the cold floor in the block he managed to snatch for his own space. He’s on his own personal hunk of wood computer.

It’s almost scary how clean everything is; it actually makes you grimace some, and he mocks the face you make. There’s a twist in your gut, but you ignore it. “I made something cool and I wanna show someone.” You bite the inside of your mouth and slide your hands in your pockets and walk to where he’s sitting to see what he’s doing, it’s nothing, per usual. A lot of blue and gray text that he quickly closes out of before you can read any of it.

“Can it wait?? I’m doing something important.”

“By important, do you mean fucking with boring aliens that look like pink ugly monkeys or do you mean _flirting_ with the ugly pink monkey aliens?” That strikes a nerve in him. Bingo. Karkat punches your shin and it makes you lose your balance and fall on your knee. He laughs at you, and you punch his shoulder.

He makes this unbearable whining noise, “Fine, oh my _god_. If it doesn’t blow me away so hard that I break my spine and have to look at it upside down and through my ankles, and then blow me away _again _and make me twist around like windmill of my own body, I’ll take immense joy in feeling your blood on my knuckles when I punch you in the face.” He says all that while he stands up, making a big show of not helping you do the same. “Don’t worry,” you start, “if it doesn’t do that long list of complicated things you want it to do, I’ll punch myself in the face.” It’s not that super impressive to you, but given the circumstances, you think it’s cool, and you know he’ll think it’s twice as cool. You just wanna rub it in his face and impress him at the same time.

When you get to your block, which is pretty far considering some stupid circumstances of musical blocks in which everyone kept switching and trading spaces, you get to your empty and really messy in comparison to his block. You’ve got a nice pile of food-related trash that you’ve scooted into a corner, bits of wire, chips of motherboard, broken keys, chunks of plastic all over the place. “I cleaned up for you, you're welcome.” You mutter and smile at him, a smile that’s not at all sincere, and he doesn’t seem to notice, just scoffing at what you said.

In the middle of the mess is a patch of empty floor in front of a literal wall of computers, all stacked on top of each other in a grid of nine, all connected by a single mouse and keyboard. Before he can say anything, you make your way to show him and talk about it a little. “It took a while, but they’re all connected, I have control of them all pretty easily.” You demonstrate by opening the last conversation you had together on Trollian, it lights up all nine monitors.

“How did you—” You don’t let him finish, you’ve been dying to explain all this to another living being for _ages._ And, no, Aradia’s ghost in a disgusting approximation of her image made of metal doesn’t count.

“It’s actually really complicated, I have no idea what era these monitors are from. Not only have I never owned any of these, I’ve never seen or heard any of these before, they aren’t even a brand, you know, there’s nothing on them that associates them with anything. They don’t function like anything back at home, it’s all dry, and lifeless, metaphorically and literally. Let me show you—” you start to unlock one of the monitors from the side with your psi before he interrupts you and breaks your concentration.

“Why did you do all this?? What are you gonna use nine computers for??” He asks like he’s mad.

“I don’t know? A really big game of Solitaire? You’re missing the point.”

“Is this what you’ve been doing for the past week and a half?? I haven’t seen you in _nights_, Sollux! If I didn’t see that revolting pile of garbage in the back there, I’d be worried sick you weren’t even eating!”

“Was I supposed to check in with you? Did you want me to knock on your door all nice and say oh _K__arkat_, just letting you know I’m not on fire,” you have a soft, shrill, and feminine tone to your voice that makes him physically cringe.

“I would’ve taken anything after the fifth night I didn’t hear from you! The door was locked up, I couldn’t even look inside to make sure you weren’t strung up _dead,_ you fucking imbecile!” As he talks, he gets closer to you, and more importantly, closer to your project. He takes notice pretty quickly when you put a hand on the top-most screen.

“And _this,_ this-this _waste of resources_, we have a _limited number of these_, Sollux, they aren’t cheap to make, what if we needed to materialize something?? Like _food_.” He’s really close to you now, almost a half-foot away as he smacks one of the monitors. You shove him hard with both of your hands on his chest.

“Knock It off, shitdick, what did I say about my personal space.”

“_Personal space?!”_ he yells, and snatches you up by the collar of your shirt, yanking you up right up to his face, your noses are almost brushing past each other. He’s still talking, but you’re not processing any of the information. Everything is warm all over, except your feet which you can’t feel at all anymore. You wanna bring your hands up and shove him again, or shove him towards you maybe.

You almost do the latter, when you mentally smack yourself enough times to shakily raise your hands up, but he’s got this near-dead expression on his face that reads “Oh shit” like a neon sign. He shoves you back so hard, the back of your head slams into the wall just behind you. Your face feels on fire, his looks like it might actually be. He shoves his hands into his pockets as far down as they go, eyes glued to the floor when he talks again. “Your…project is cool and all. I think I’m gonna go”

“Yeah,” you respond way too quickly, not paying super close attention to what he said before that. He’s out of your block just as quickly, closing the door behind him, and you slide against the wall until you're sitting down. 

xxx

You don’t talk to each other a few nights after that. When you enter a room, he quickly looks at you, and his gaze snaps back to whatever he was looking at before. If he’s talking with someone, he does it so quietly and stops as soon as he sees you. You know he’s talking about you. You’ve been trying to act like things are fine, things are normal. You shove into him when you walk past each other, and he mutters “sorry” for the first time basically ever. This fucking blows, you thought him half-making a move would be fun and cool, but instead, he’s acting like he doesn’t even know you.

You’re tinkering with your monstrosity and “lack of resources” alone in your block, nothing but the blank blue screens and your eyes lighting your hands when you hear knocking. You don’t even look up from your work, opening the door with your psi. You glance up, and it’s him, Karkat. He looks over his shoulder like he doesn’t want people knowing he’s in here, and quietly closes the door behind him. Are you that repulsive to him??

“We need to talk.” The phrase makes your shoulder’s tense with anger.

“Can it _wait? _I’m _busy._” You’re mocking him. He knows it, he’s not that stupid, but he doesn’t do anything to indicate that he does. “It’s really important.” He says this with a nervous, yet calm tone. You drop what you’re doing, and turn your sitting position to face him, and he sits as well. Your elbow is on your thigh, cheek on your palm while you look at him with a very intentional and calculated look of annoyance.

“You know what I wanna talk about.” He says a-matter-of-factly.

“I don’t, actually. Do we wanna talk about how you’ve been avoiding me? How you’ve been murmuring about me to your little gossip friends?” The word ‘gossip’ sounds like a plank of stone being shoved through a wood chipper, but he doesn’t comment, just making a bit of a grimace as you spoke. “I haven’t been—okay, maybe I’ve been talking about you. But I’m not—it’s not gossip!” He talks with his hands, as usual, palms up and open.

“What I was referring to,” He over-enunciates to express frustration, “was me…and my hands on you…I felt like I wasn’t even myself. I didn’t mean to put my hands on you like that.” So that’s what he thinks this is about?

He’s fidgeting, tugging at his sleeves and looking like he’s actually ashamed and yet still bashful about it all. “And?” You do your best to look bored even though you’re genuinely very curious to hear what he has to say and how he’s going to fuck it up this time.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry. It wasn’t—I wasn’t _that_ mad, I didn’t think you were—I knew this was something you were excited about, and maybe—I definitely shouldn’t have shat on it like I did and-Don’t give me that look! Oh my god!! I’m giving you a heartfelt apology!!” He punches your shoulder and makes you jump and sit up for once.

“Jesus, fine, this whole thing is just bullshit. All of this. I don’t care that you think you were gonna kill me. It was actually—” You stop yourself, biting your lip and scratching your neck. “The thing that upset me was you being a fucking prick, yeah, and then being a prick afterward too.”

“What were you going to say.” He’s staring at you with his ugly bugged out wide eyes and brows furrowed together. “There’s no way you don’t care, tell me what you were going to say.” The way he’s talking to you makes you feel claustrophobic, you feel like you’re going to get crushed under the weight of all his prying questions. You gotta think of a way to make it sound like something casual. “I was just gonna say that it was…uh…. exciting. Like the thrill of a fight?.

He laughs in your face, dry and fake, clearly mocking you. “You’re such an idiot! You can’t hide this shit from me! Just admit you're weirdly intimidated by me in a weird way and we can move on!”

You almost exploded right there. “That is _absolutely not_ what I’m hiding from you, Jesus Christ, could you _be_ any more of a narcissistic freak?” Your shoulders tense up, and you even emphasize scooting back from him some.

He notices. “Oh yeah?? Then what’s the deal with you constantly agitating me? And throwing viruses at me to get me to yell and scream at you and pulling me away from working with the humans to look at your stupid little dollhouse of computers. And the way you say 'oh Karkat, you're thhhhuch a thhupid piece of shit, and bothering you ithh thooo funny!' And how you're always—” His expression goes completely blank when he stops talking, and he bites his lip really hard. Your pulse is pounding plainly in your chest.

He’s got you figured out, but not if you derail him. “I know what you’re thinking, and you sound so fucking stupid, so fucking—I wish I recorded you, in fact, I wish I recorded every stupid thing you ever said so I could make a fucking soundboard out of them all.” You pause to breathe and he says, plain and simple, “You’re pitch for me, aren’t you?”

You’re completely silent, unable to even open your stupid mouth to say something in response, or even breathe for that matter. The word bounces in your head and your chest over and over again. You’ve been intentionally keeping it out of your head and out of your mouth for a reason. If the word didn’t exist, you would never come to terms with your feelings. But now that it’s there, it feels like hot lava on your organs. You try scooting back from him again, keeping your gaze as far away from him as possible. “You’re not making any sense, you should leave, maybe rest, take a nap--”

“Oh no you don’t.” He mutters, and grabs you by the knees, dragging you back towards him, not exactly where you were before, but a little closer. You actually can’t breathe now, not the stupid movie version of can't breathe, the anxiety version of can't breathe. “It’s-it’s fine that you’re…that. I’m not mad or anything.” This doesn’t make you feel better, but you stay quiet.

“_Are_ you pitch for me?? That look you’re giving me doesn’t make me as confident as I was before. If you are, fucking say it, I don’t wanna play this game where we pretend we don’t know anything and dance all around with our heads in our asses like nothing’s going on.”

You groan, hands over your face and rubbing your eyes. He’s so fucking dumb, his analogies are fucking terrible and you’re so embarrassed you want to crawl into your nine monitors and disappear into space forever. “_Yeah_, okay, fine, yeah, I’m pitch for you, big fucking reveal, big fucking party, let’s have a huge surprise cake and ice cream for Sollux, realizing he’s pitch and admitting it, are you fucking happy?? Do you feel proud and good that you stuck your hand down my throat and yanked that confession out of me??”

He laughs again, a single triumphant “HA!” and claps, “I _knew_ it!”

“You knew for five fucking seconds, don’t pull that shit on me! Look, it’s whatever, it doesn’t matter, I don’t care, you can keep pretending I’m a diseased shitbag. I know you’re staring daggers through your screen at the space aliens anyway, you don’t need to humor me.” He scoffs and shakes his head.

“Are you talking about John?” you don’t like the face he’s making. You feel this twist in your gut of angry embarrassment. This must be how he feels all the time; you don’t like it. 

"I don't care enough to get to know them."

“Jealous?” the way he says this makes you want to stab him in the throat so bad. He probably gets that impression because he just laughs again. God, you hate his fucking laugh. “You don’t have to worry about John, he…apparently doesn’t like guys? I had to ask Dave what that meant. I still don’t get it entirely. I think it was just an excuse to reject me.” He sounds sad or at least slightly disappointed. You wonder if he’s hung up on it or if he’s…You don’t wanna get your hopes up, and you sum that up with, “Still. It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything is fine. It’s nothing serious.” You’re kind of lying, just a little bit. There’s a weird blend of frustration and sadness in your gut.

His hands are still on your knees though, like he’s prepared for you trying to physically distance yourself from him again. Then again, one could make the argument that you could remove his hands yourself but you kind of like them being there. In a warm, grounded kind of way. Regardless, you still shuffle uncomfortably, hands at your sides touching the cold floor and a piece of tiny wire that you fidget with.

“I think you’re misunderstanding me. Which is surprising; I thought you were smarter than that. You don’t have to _worry_ about_ John_. Knock knock anyone home???” This interaction is getting worse and worse.

“I really don’t like the way you’re condescending to me.” You say, bluntly.

“Well _someone_ has to. You’re not getting it any other way! I…” He stops himself, drawing his hands nervously away from you to gesture, mostly in the form of messing with his sleeves and fingers. “I think…. there’s something we can do. About you feeling that way. About me.”

“About you.”

“Yes, about me. And also about you. In the same…” A five-second pause heavily cloaks the air.

“Quadrant.” The way the word crawls out of your mouth is like a drowned victim being dragged out of sludge for the first time in his life. It makes your face cringe and your shoulders tighten.

“Yes, exactly! But I don’t want—”

“Other people to know about it?”

“Yes!” he laughs again, sterile and unattached. “Yes, exactly! Nobody else needs to know about this, I’m so glad you understand.”

“I do understand. And it’s not…a reputation thing it’s a—”

“It’s none of their business!”

“Right, right, none of their business, it’s our business. Our business being…” you stop yourself from saying the word again, and he doesn’t say it either for a really long time. The two of you stutter the word out in jagged and uneven unison. “Kismesis.”

It feels like eating medicine or soap. Are you sure you want to be with someone who’s this awkward and makes _you_ feel so awkward? There’s no going back now, how much of a fucking dick move would it be if you said _h__aha yeah, I know we just agreed to be in a relationship together, but I'm suddenly having second doubts and don't wanna bother anymore! See ya!" _

“Is it supposed to be this weird?” of course, Karkat had to open his stupid ugly mouth and say something, ruining your internal monologue that was super serious and important.

“I don’t know how else it’s supposed to be. You’re the one who puts in all the fucking research, where’s your big brain juice now, fuckshit.”

“Research and experience are _completely_ different, you of all people should know that.”

“Oh? And what’s that supposed to mean?” You scoff and lean back, hands propping you up from behind. You’re feeling better. This is good, this is okay.

“Just that you’re…you’ve had more relationship experience, I guess?”

“In a different quadrant. I don’t think that counts for this instance.”

“So Eridan—”

“I want you to stop right there. I don’t _ever_ want to hear his name in this context._ Ever again.”_ You point at him for emphasis. Karkat holds his hands up in defense. “Alright, geez. I just figured the way he talks about you and looks at you, there was something—”

“There was nothing. There was always nothing.”

“Okay, Christ! Can’t a guy ask a question or confirm anything around here without getting fucking crucified?”

xxx

Things, for the most part, go back to normal after that. You still fight exactly the same amount. Except for this time, you’re doing it closer, physically, hands shoving each other, or shoulders bumping each other, and it makes you feel all fiery and giddy. And the verbal shit you throw at each other is a little more calculated than before. He wraps his arm around you sometimes when you stand or sit next to each other, and it makes you feel kind of nice, even if he never looks at you while he’s doing it around other people, especially. Any time someone asks, you always deny it. “Black? What black?? I’ve never even heard of—you must mean something else.”

There’s another difference too, something really new. Sometimes, when you tell him, shut up, he’ll use that hardcore, cliché “make me” line. And sometimes, you actually do make him.


End file.
